Memoir, meter, metaphor, and more at annual Festival of Authors
The festival runs October 18 to November 1 and will feature a talk by international economic policy adviser Cass Sunstein.
Bookworms, take note.
From the Acton Museum to the Colonial Inn, and at other venues across town, an annual salute to the written and spoken word will showcase award-winning writers of adult and children’s fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, memoir, and more during the Acton Festival of Authors.
“The area is full of wonderful writers,” says Barbara Gugluizza, head of reference at the library and co-organizer of the festival along with Christine Lamb. “We love to celebrate them.”
The festival runs October 18 to November 1. Its capstone event will be a talk by international economic policy adviser and Acton resident Cass Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University professor at Harvard and former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Sunstein will draw from the ideas in his new book “On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom.”
Concordians Tom Wilson (“Acton’s Wright Tavern: At the Crossroads of the American Revolution”) and Richard Higgins (“Thoreau’s God”) will talk about their books.
A program billed as “The History Detective” will have public historian Beth van Duzer and CFPL William Munroe Special Collections Curator Anke Voss of Acton providing advice on how to research and write about history.
Breakfast and biography
The festival kicks off October 18 with an authors breakfast at the inn, moderated by Suzanne Koven of Acton, a primary care physician and the inaugural writer-in-residence at Massachusetts General Hospital. At the breakfast, Dr. Pria Anand, author of “The Mind Electric: Stories of the Strangeness and Wonder of our Brains,” Pushcart Prize-winning writer Nicole Graev Lipson (“Mothers and Other Fictional Characters)” and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Megan Marshall (“Margaret Fuller: A New American Life”) will discuss their writing.
Later in the festival, The Transcendentalism Council of First Parish will present Marshall in a program titled “A Flowering of New England Women.” She will discuss her books “Margaret Fuller: Collected Writings,” and “The Peabody Sisters.”
Britt Crow-Miller, a naturalist, writer (“Thank You, Old Oak”), and educator, will offer a Storytime & Kids’ Crafts session; Tara Roberts, a storyteller and adventurer (“Written in the Waters”), will chronicle her experiences exploring Atlantic Ocean waters with Black scuba divers searching for the wrecks of slave ships. Award-winning poets Jonathan Aaron and Linda Flaherty Haltmaier will read from their work.
Acton resident Kate Flora, a true-crime and mystery writer, will moderate a panel of whodunit authors from the region, Nicole Asselin, Richard Cass, and Kim Herdman Shapiro.
Marcella Pixley of Acton, an award-winning author of young adult novels (“Neshama”), and Karen Kirsten, writer and Holocaust educator (“Irena’s Gift”), will take part in a conversation with Jennifer S. Brown (“The Whisper Sister”).
Kristen Case will offer a reading and conversation drawn from her new book, “Henry David Thoreau’s Kalendar,” an exploration of Thoreau’s final work. A debut authors panel featuring Nicky Gonzalez, Courtney Gustafson, Christine Murphy, and Blue Nguyen will be moderated by the library’s writer-in-residence, Steve Edwards.
In “Haunted Fables from the Gables,” Nathaniel Hawthorne — whose alter ego is actor Paul Riopelle — will perform his Gothic tales of horror and those of his contemporary, Edgar Allan Poe, in a program for “brave children 10 and up.”
For aspiring playwrights, a discussion about the challenges and rewards of writing for theater will be held following a performance of “Tick, Tick… Boom!” at The Umbrella.
The series of events is sponsored by the Friends of the Acton Free Public Library with support from the Acton Free Public Library Corp. and the library staff.
For details on all festival events, free with registration unless noted, visit concordfestivalofauthors.org.
